1. A Subbasin-based Framework to Represent Land Surface Processes in an Earth System Model Right: Stream network in major US river basins. Bottom: Comparison of skill metric based on Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of subbasin (SCLM) vs. grid (CLM) based approaches for simulating streamflow • Objective • Demonstrate a subbasin-based framework for hydrologic modeling using the Community Land Model (CLM) coupled to the Model for Scale-Adaptive River Transport (MOSART) • Compare the scalability of the subbasin approach with the traditional structured grid approach • Approach • Implemented the subbasin approach for the coupled CLM-MOSART through modifications to the existing CLM modeling structure and development of input data • Performed CLM-MOSART simulations with the grid- and subbasin-based approaches at 4 spatial resolutions, from 1/8o to 1o • Using simulations at 1/8o as the “reference solutions,” compared model errors at coarser resolutions to determine scalability of the grid- and subbasin-based approaches Snow dominated Intermediate Rain dominated • Impact • Demonstrated superior scalability advantage of the subbasin-based approach over the grid-based approach for simulating both peak and mean streamflow in river basins of contrasting climate and hydrology in the U.S. Tesfa TK, HY Li, LR Leung, M Huang, Y Ke, Y Sun, and Y Liu. 2014. “A Subbasin-Based Framework to Represent Land Surface Processes in Earth System Models.” Geoscientific Model Development 7:947–963. DOI: 10.5194/gmd-7-947-2014